Ava - Our 1st Specialty Grand Champion!

We are beyond thrilled to announce that Ava – NZ Platinum CH Kitaco Smashed Avacado, has achieved her Specialty Grand Champion title!

Ava is such a delight and such a spectacular example of her breed. She has wowed judges (in particular specialty judges) time and again since she entered the ring. Born during the COVID lockdown, she never got to show as a Baby Puppy, Her first show was in September 2020. By October, even as a Puppy, she was winning Best of Breed consistently, and has continued to do so, ever since.

There is something very special about Ava, and we’re pretty sure the elevator doesn’t go all the way up to the top floor in that pretty little head of hers.

Ava is immune to any kind of discipline. You can’t growl at her or tell her off. She just doesn’t compute. She will just bark until she gets what she wants, no matter what you do or say.

If there is a lap available, she must be on it. She won’t sit in the trolley at a show without barking incessantly (unless we are ringside, where oddly, she’s as good as gold). Otherwise, she has to sit on top of the trolley on her Princess cushion, or we have to put up the “night-night” curtain, so it’s dark and she’ll go to sleep.

She will run around like a maniac, but the moment you pick her up, she goes into low power mode and will go straight to sleep. It’s actually not that easy to get a photo of her if she’s being held, because her eyes are always closed.

She is Jenny’s “Brekky Dog”. At breakfast, and only at breakfast, she will bark incessantly at Jenny until she is picked up and put on her lap. She doesn’t do it to Tracey or at any other time of the day. Just Jenny. And just breakfast.

Our little Grand Champion is a creature of habit and once she learns how to do something, she gets stuck in a loop and has to do it that way, all the time.

She has over 115 Championship Certificates, and along the way has taken 67 Best of Breeds, 62 Reserve Best of Breeds, 5 Best Puppy of Group, 4 Best Junior of Group, 10 Best Intermediate of Group, 13 NZ Bred of Group, 4 Best Open of Group, 6 Reserve Best of Group, 9 Best of Group, 1 Best Junior in Show, 3 Best Intermediate in Show, 5 Best NZ Bred in Show, 2 Best Open in Show, 2 Reserve Best in Show and 4 Best in Shows and Best Bitch at Nationals in 2024.

Which brings us to her Specialty Grand Champion title, which can only be achieved when a dog has won 3 Best in Shows in a Championship Speciality Show with a specified minimum number of entries. We thought she had a achieved this last year, when she won Best in Show at the DCC Specialty Champ Show, but realised afterwards that one of her 3 wins was at a show which was a single entry shy of the required number to qualify.

We had resigned ourselves to the idea she would never get there. It is no mean feat to win 3 Best in Shows let alone take a 4th. But thanks to the DCC speciality show this year being held in conjunction with the National Dog Show, we were inundated with entries and well and truly had the numbers, so you can imagine our delight when the international judge awarded her Best in Show. So thankful to the North (and South) Island exhibitors who entered the Specialty show. Without them, she likely would never have achieved her Grand Champion title.

Either way, Ava was our Grand Champion long before we got a certificate from Dogs NZ to say they agree with and her very existence lights up our lives.